Archive for iHurt

It’s Me or the … Kitten???

August 31, 2010 at 1:56 am · Filed under Gripes & Grumpings, Rescue Ramblings and Misc. Furry Foolishness, iHurt

In the time it took me to recognize the frantic blob circling the sidewalk ahead of me as a tiny little animal, a pleasant Saturday evening turned into a melodramatic butting of heads, and tonight I have a half-empty bottle of wine and a bag of chocolates to show for it. It was my gay boyfriend’s prescription for the night, and I for one was not about to argue.

Leave it to me to find a newly-abandoned kitten at the local park just before a storm and wind up in a standoff with the new dude over it. It is as I texted the Psych Spectacular: “Abandoned kitten in rain vs my boyfriend. No one won, really … but I can tell you which one came home with me that night.”

Because I will not compromise my morals for someone else. And I shouldn’t have to. I stand behind my decision 200%. And, as I told him tonight while I spelled out exactly what I will and will not stand for, it WILL happen again. Hell, I scooped up a turtle out of the road yesterday morning on my way to work, and dropped its hissing, ungrateful self in the woods where it belonged so it wouldn’t be hit by the morning traffic. You want to complain about and feel threatened by that, too?

This is who I am. Get over it or get gone. In the meantime, someone needs a name.

Comments (5)

The Merits of Meltdowns

August 26, 2010 at 11:35 pm · Filed under Happy-Type Stuff, Life As I Know It, iHurt

(And how the Psych Spectacular maintains her right to the title.)

Dude.

Duuuuuuuuuuude.

I keep wanting to recap London, but life keeps effing getting in my way.

Dating is a complex monster, and currently uncovering every ugly, irrational little insecurity I never knew I had. And the poor gent, he just goes with the flow.

Like last night. While texting, we got on the topic of the three letter S word. While it’s a topic we’ve visited time and time again (with our crude senses of humor, how could we not?), this time there was nothing funny. It was balls-out honesty.

He had put the moves on me once before. I stopped him at the zipper of my jeans. I said no.

And he … listened? What the hell kind of insanity is this? I can say no and be respected? It was confusing and terrifying and, in a way I can’t explain, painful. This is what it felt like to be honored? What?

So when I turned down his invitation to intimacy Wednesday night (honestly, blame Aunt Flow), it was amidst tears. Tears that a text message wouldn’t show. Noting my distress (because some things even a text message can’t disguise), he asked if I wanted to talk about it. I gave him the most honest, humiliating truth I could offer … and if someone could hug you through a text, he hugged me. He spent the next thirty minutes reassuring me, and I spent the thirty minutes following that curled in fetal position sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, with Napoleon as a stand-in Kleenex. I asked him why it hurt to be cared for, why respect had to be so novel and painful, why I couldn’t distinguish between positive attention and negative attention, and instead reverted back to the feral dog in me who was terrified of any attention at all. Why I wanted to sabotage the only thing I had ever wanted. Napoleon offered no answers outside of a wagging tail and a troubled face that licked the tears off of my own. He laid down beside me and let me cling to him until the kindness of the Gent didn’t hurt quite as much.

Still.

How dare he care about me? How dare he respect me? How dare he want to be with me, and listen to me when I say no? How dare he promise never to force THAT ONE THING on me?

I asked the questions out loud, to the dogs, because the echo of asking them in my own head had gotten too much to bear.

I stopped saying “no” a long time ago. Because it was never heeded, so why bother? I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care if I was just a sex object, someone to screw after a milkshake at the local Steak & Shake. Except that failing to voice my objection brought with it its own set of troubles—namely, a feeling of complicity. After all, it’s not rape if you don’t say no, right?

And curled up in fetal position on the PS’ couch this morning, still sleepy from the sedative I took the night before, I didn’t want to tell her the humiliating truths I had confessed to the Gent the night before. She, as she is so skilled at doing, wheedled it out of me in the safety of a soft voice and frighteningly accurate guess as to why I was hiding, turning the tables on me and lightening the moment with a bit of humor as I so often tend to do.

She echoed everything the Gent had told me – this is normal, you are not a freak, you deserve to be honored for your boundaries … and, she added, you are making incredibly healthy choices in the way you deal with what you’re feeling. Granted, that’s not verbatim, but I think it does catch the general feeling behind her words. “Why do you even see me?” she kidded. “You don’t need me. Look at you working through this on your own.”

Curled in a ball on the couch (still wearing heels, despite my personal “no shoes on the furniture” rule), giggling at her teasing, the truth came out and I was met with nothing but assurance that I was doing this right, that my tangled mess of emotion was normal for someone with my past and that this room, the room I had only just returned to this very morning due to scheduling conflicts, was always going to be a safe place for me to unleash the emotions that I couldn’t unleash with the Gent. That it was okay. That yes, the fact that my body was being respected was novel and the fact that it was novel was sad … but it was still okay. She approved of what the Gent had said to me the night before, and reinforced that yes, he should be willing to wait, he should be respecting my comfort level—and not to give him too much credit just for doing the right thing. Ha. As if I, the queen of all things skittish and sarcastic, could give anyone too much credit.

She closed the session with a gigantically warm, safe hug and a kiss to the neck. And I walked out of there, tottering down the stairs in heels that hadn’t seen the light of day since last fall (and ankles that weren’t entirely so sure of said heels, given the drugs then in my system), but feeling wide awake and giggly and generally able to conquer the world. And my day only got better from there.

Comments (7)

And sometimes, I wonder who rescued who

June 10, 2010 at 5:40 am · Filed under iHurt

I watched my dad being loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled away in an ambulance tonight by six paramedics operating like a SWAT team. I spent three hours in the ER wondering if he was going to regain consciousness and come out the other side, and texting everyone and their brother to keep myself distracted. At least until our chaplain-nurse-whatever-she-officially-was brought me a cup of wonderful, steaming coffee and another nurse brought me a fresh-out-of-the-dryer blanket, and I curled up in a chair at the foot of my father’s bed and fell asleep, after arguing with him that since I was his and my mom’s only way home, I was so not leaving, his proud and independent streak be damned.

Our broken garage door fell on his head ten minutes after I got home from work tonight, in a nutshell. He sulked. He raged. He terrorized. Under too much stress and now in excruciating pain, he said he hoped he just bled to death and to please give him thirty minutes alone so he could just die already. And fifteen minutes later, death wasn’t too far at all. He took too long in the shower, my mother picked the lock on the bathroom door, and found him unconscious in the floor. Cue the worst fucking five hours of my life.

Can life please stop sucking right now. Please. Elsie’s appointment got rescheduled to Saturday, due to Memorial Day and my insistence that only the one doctor I trust takes care of her. I see an endocrinologist on Friday morning for persistent, crazy-dangerously-low blood sugar issues that I can’t get a grip on. And then tonight, my dad says he wants to die and then nearly fucking does. And seeing this larger-than-life man that always chased away the boogiemen, despite his god-awful temper, unresponsive on the floor with glassy eyes that didn’t see anything at all … was absolutely terrifying. As was answering the paramedics’ questions that my mother was too stunned to handle on her own. I answered their questions, I made executive decisions, I ushered my mother into the ambulance, and I watched in my rearview through the ambulance’s rear window as the paramedics worked to stabilize my dad before they ever pulled away from the house.

And I feel so fucking helpless and overwhelmed, I’m losing my mind. I just want to curl up in a ball and hide. But the dogs crowd around and refuse to leave my side, even waking me in the night when my blood sugar plummets so I can tend to it (someone tell me how on earth they know?), and I just think … really, who rescued who?

Comments (10)

The Risk You Take

May 25, 2010 at 11:13 pm · Filed under Rescue Ramblings and Misc. Furry Foolishness, iHurt ·Tagged

“Inky, no offense … but just grow a pair and do it.”

We were sharing dinner and drinks with the Brindle Brothers in East Atlanta. No offense was taken—he was right, you know.

And tonight, my father’s rage brought my mother and me together, both of us equal targets for his anger. The conversation somehow turned to the near-attack on my coworker by my foster puppy.

“What are your options, then?” she asked, when I told her I had taken the pup off the adoption list.

I burst into tears halfway through “I don’t know.” Because really, I did know. She did, too.

“It’s understandable. You’ve done everything you can. You’ve given her a good, happy home. There’s no way to know how the genetics will play out when they’re puppies.”

“But it’s not just me I’m hurting,” I cried. “It’s everyone else, because she’s been part of the family since September and everyone else is attached to her, too. And now I have to hurt everyone else to do the right thing. It fucking sucks. It’s fucking stupid.”

She didn’t challenge me on my liberal use of the F word, despite my Southern Baptist background. She just agreed – it is stupid.

“Sweetheart, we’re all adults here. We know the risks. We’ve been in this since your dad brought home your first foster dog however many years ago. It’s the risk you take.”

She offered to go with me. Barring that, she suggested I buy myself a few beers and pass out in my room – and this from a teetotaler married to the son of an alcoholic. She knew better than to touch me to offer comfort, but said she was sorry enough times that I got the point. She didn’t blame me. I do, nonetheless.

I called Dr. Awesome … and burst into tears again halfway through my request.

“It’s okay, boo. And I know that, coming from you, it has to be the right decision,” he added, knowing I was second-guessing myself even as we talked. “It’s okay. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

I hung up the phone and hung my head, in tears … again, dammit. The date was set. She wouldn’t be tormented for much longer.

And in a broken mess, I texted the Psych Spectacular. She called shortly after, and I fell into a rambling puddle of hurt. She set aside a time for me to see her this week if I wanted to (no pressure, she added). And in the face of the upcoming decisions, I do. Despite all the shit that has gone down lately, I really, really do.

Comments (5)

It’s Okay to Think About Ending

May 13, 2010 at 6:26 pm · Filed under Music for the Moment, iHurt ·Tagged

“And it’s okay to not even start
Put it away, wait ’til tomorrow
Put it away, and take care of your heart”
-Earlimart

I called off therapy with the Psych Spectacular indefinitely. Knowing my penchant for giving even the most undeserving piece of shit enough second chances to make the most forgiving of doormats look cold-hearted, I doubt it will be a permanent move and I am scheduled to see her two days before I leave for London—but in the new office again, which will be another nightmare in and of itself. (So much for the whole “I’ll still see you here, I wouldn’t ask you to move—it wouldn’t feel right after this” bit, I suppose).

I got tired of throwing up before every session out of dread. Of not knowing if and when and where our appointment was going to be kept, since it inevitably wound up canceled or at the very least, rearranged, the day of. After a while, the reasons no longer mattered, and I got tired of changing plans to accommodate hers. I stopped wanting to tell her anything at all because she’d become such a peripheral, come-and-go part of life that it just didn’t matter anymore.

So I told her today that I couldn’t do it anymore.

I just didn’t think that I would be this devastated to stop seeing someone I’ve so dreaded seeing in the first place.

[Comments closed. I don't want her vilified by anyone not knowing the full story. It is what it is ... what it is just happens to suck.]

Comments off

Weaknesses, risks, and rather happyish things

May 3, 2010 at 12:12 am · Filed under Happy-Type Stuff, Life As I Know It, Travels & Other Adventures, iHurt

I don’t talk about the psych stuff much anymore, aside from a mention of the PS here and there, as for the most part, the madness is cleaning up well. I haven’t cut, I haven’t been entertaining food demons, and I haven’t thought (seriously) of checking out in several months. I am holding on, and holding on well … and yes, I’m proud of myself for it. My scars have remained scars. After eight years of holding onto a blade as a coping skill, having so many months without the stainless steel painkiller is huge. I refuse to count the weeks or the months for various reasons, but I’m holding on, and I’m glad to be doing it.

I was recently going through bookmarks and came across a post I’d saved a year ago (go read it, I’ll wait). And I questioned why I’d saved it, when I was drinking more responsibly then at twenty (and nineteen, before that) than I have in the last six now-legal months. Did I know then that I’d lose my grip? Who’s to say? But back in the fall, I knew exactly when things turned the corner, and I knew why. I also knew it was going to get a whole lot uglier before it got better. And it did. I coped, but I coped with a bottle in hand. Some people may be comfortable drowning their malaise in half of a bottle of wine on a regular basis, but I have never been one of them.

I didn’t miss the stuff when I didn’t have it. It was habit. If I was sitting on that couch, or reading that book, it was a natural part of the equation. Get lost in the drink to get away from reality. But where to go when I wanted to get away from it? I was slipping, but mired in humiliation and determined to claw my own way out.

It’s been an interesting re-training process, and one replete with “Hey, dare me not to drink ’til we meet next week?” texts to the PS. As with everything else I’ve ever used to torment myself, it was only a matter of finding a decent alternative. I still drink amongst friends, and I don’t ever see myself being a teetotaler, but I indulge more as the semi-sane nineteen-year-old did—with a healthy moderation. I don’t go at it to get away from anything these days, and yeah, I’m happy about that, too.

And Thursday, I took the 20-odd bucks I’d ordinarily put into a bottle of vodka and put them instead into a tank of gas, a cup of coffee, and a $5 parking permit at a state park in the mountains, in the company of someone I had only just begun getting to know. I left the leashes at home, took my camera—and also took a leap of faith. It was not unrewarded.

It was an hour-and-a-half trip there, three hours to hike, and the same ninety minutes back. If we didn’t know each other that well when we started, we’d certainly made a dent in the gap by the time we returned. (And before anyone goes all “mother hen” on my ass, my younger sister and I had pre-arranged times to check in, and she had a code phrase to watch for if I ever felt iffy about Mr. Dude).

We chatted and exchanged cameras with passers-by, ventured off the beaten path a few times in the name of curiosity, and talked of our summer travel plans; two different countries, two different objectives, but for the same length of time, and both trips discussed with the same nervous laughter skirting the edges of the conversation.

I let myself feel everything, nothing muted or tamped down by the latest preferred method of self-abuse, and everything seemed ridiculously vibrant and alive. We hunted skinks, counted pennies in the calmer waters near the waterfall, and commented aloud at the sun’s backlighting of the leaves. We hiked in the sunlight, lunched with the breeze making its lazy way through the shade, and sang along to the radio on the way back.

We weren’t anything at all, other than two people navigating each other’s car space and enjoying the random company.

We weren’t anything … and that in and of itself was everything.

(Pictures to follow—as usual).

Comments (4)

And it feels about like this

March 11, 2010 at 1:25 am · Filed under iHurt

Saturday night, I broke my own “no partying on Saturdays when you work on Sunday” rule and after working a thirteen hour shift at the clinic, donned “whore boots” and a mini skirt and hit up the Earl in East Atlanta to see one of the local funk and soul bands. I met up with my former coworkers-turned-friends, plus the guy from Athens (unexpectedly), and had truly the best time out I have had in a while. We got there at 7:30 and finally left around 1am, slightly inebriated and utterly danced out, and it was so completely worth the pain of getting up at 5am the next morning for another 13 hour shift. And dude! I was introduced, completely out of the blue, to a local photographer whose work I’ve been following for a while now. Night? Made. In a thousand different ways, made.

But now, it’s raining and the view out the window about matches the tone of the last few days. Everything is muted, but I can’t say that I don’t like it. The quiet is nice, if a little gloomy.

In other news, he proved me right. He didn’t succeed, but he tried and he forced his hand. I had figured as much. She texted me last week and said she didn’t want to talk about it. She did anyway, legs swinging over the arm of the chair and laughing it off, as if by smiling she could prove it didn’t hurt. And all I could see was me, swallowing the hurt and trying to laugh off the details of my own sordid misery to the PS, just in case she didn’t take it seriously. Because if I didn’t, then it wouldn’t hurt if she didn’t either, right? So it was that with The-Hobbit-turned-Cinderella, I took it seriously even when she couldn’t quite bring herself to. And it sucks swallowing the big-sister reaction and taking on instead that of the parent, the confidante, the … therapist? Fuck if I know. Too many hats to keep them all straight.

And completely unrelated, I realized the other day that it’s been a year since Des died. It snowed the same day, too. You’d think I’d forget … as if the failed five would let me. The dynamic here just isn’t the same, and I think I just miss how it was when it was only the Brindle Brothers, Desmond, and me. We had the apartment then, not the flooding dungeon of horrors as we do now; we had the Other Half; we had our sense of independence. Now? I don’t know what we have. Except a big, fucking hole.  Which is neither here nor there. But hey, it’s midnight and I always spew without censorship after midnight (just ask the PS … God knows she’s gotten enough early morning emails from me to know).

So yeah. It’s all greyed out, not even black and white but just greyed and blurred and slightly out of focus. And it feels about like this, which I couldn’t explain if I tried. It just … does.

Comments (4)

And by the way, mini-comas don’t fix things

February 19, 2010 at 2:49 am · Filed under iHurt ·Tagged , , ,

She offered to let me borrow the DVD we had watched the day before, almost as if in an effort to console me. I declined; she seemed surprised.

And today, the stupid sedatives finally oozing their way out of my system, leaving only a hazed depression behind it, so am I. If I declined a token of comfort from her, especially one of music, I was a hell of a lot worse off than I thought. Jesus God.

I think it’s time to hand over the chill pills. Enough.

(And yeah, you get a twofer. It’s late, I can’t sleep, and I can’t stop thinking about, for lack of a better word, stuff. Cheerful-ish thoughts and pictures in color to return at a later date).

Leave a Comment

Perspective

February 19, 2010 at 1:20 am · Filed under iHurt ·Tagged , , , ,

People don’t believe me when I say rescuers are crazy. You have to be to see what we see (I can’t imagine being a children’s social worker, dear God), to do what we do, and to still not off yourself … and then someone goes and actually does it. Or in this case, two people.

Two local rescuers (one from the organization I am active with) committed suicide only a day apart this week. Unrelated, but same method. There are a lot of hurt people and a lot of disadvantaged dogs around here right now.

This is why I take breaks. It’s why I avoid animal control some weeks, why I delete emails without opening them, why I let myself burn out and build back up. Because I’ve said it since I started—if you can’t take care of yourself, you’re sure as shit not taking care of anyone else. Spread yourself too thin in rescue and you’re not helping anyone at all.

But so sayeth the girl who has been down that road a time too many and continues to dally on it—it is of course, an instance of “do as I say and not as I do.” So in continuing the week’s theme of “Foster Homes on the Edge,” I sabotaged my session with the PS on Tuesday for reasons yet to be ascertained, which in turn inspired a fourteen-hour sedative-induced sleep, and all of the guilt that follows. Upon waking and calling one of my friends to let her know about the first of the deaths, she asked, “So, do you see what would happen? Now do you get it?”

Yeah, I get it.

(And because I wouldn’t feel as though this post were complete without it: 1-800-SUICIDE / 1-800-784-2433. Give it to someone. Use it yourself. Just get it out there).

Comments (6)

You Wouldn’t Think

February 9, 2010 at 11:58 pm · Filed under Rescue Ramblings and Misc. Furry Foolishness, iHurt ·Tagged , ,

I’ve been in it for years. I know the reality. Things that shouldn’t happen, things that defy logic and common sense, happen. Behind the double doors, where it’s all a juggling act of numbers and a deadly game of musical chairs, logic and common sense don’t cease to exist so much as they simply find new definitions in the face of the reality confined within those four walls.

I know all of that … I know, I know, I know.

But I still get caught off guard, I still get punched in the gut, and I still stop and stare at a kennel that shouldn’t be empty but suddenly is.

Because you wouldn’t think that a twelve week old bundle of wrinkles and a twelve-week-old bundle of wiggles, with their blue coats and matching blue eyes, would have any trouble getting out the front door.

You wouldn’t think that in the ten days the two were there, that I would be the only one to look twice.

You wouldn’t think space would run out as quickly as it did.

You wouldn’t think. You just wouldn’t think.

But then again, neither did the one who wanted “just one litter” and then threw away the leftovers. Neither did the ones who passed them by in favor of smaller choices.

They didn’t think. I didn’t think. And that is perhaps how the unthinkable gets its foot in the door every, single time. Because nobody thinks it could.

And the only thing I can think right now is that I’m tired of losing.

Those who are dead are not dead
They’re just living my head …
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well …

Coldplay, “42”

Comments (3)

Older Posts »